The Prose Bowl returns for a special one night event: Raise a Glass! We’re inviting everyone down to the Richardson to make a toast to just about anything. If you want to praise the Oxford comma, or Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s pinkie toe, have at it. We’re looking to have the best dinner party, complete with awkward pauses, crudite, and more than a bit of booze. It’s a free event, so if you want to raise a glass, come join, and if not, come anyway! How can you turn down snacks, drinks, and moving tributes?!

If you do want to read, here’s the deal: Write a toast to something. Anything at all. We’re looking for pretty quick ones. So if you write it in advance, look to be around 400 words. If you’re looking for an example, think of Jimmy Fallon’s thank you notes. It can be funny, it can be moving, it can be real or fake. If you’ve been sitting on a best man’s speech, and maid-of-honor speech for a while, knock it out with us. And, hey, if you don’t want to read it yourself we have a few lovely actors who would be happy to read it for you. Get to scribbling, ladies and gents! Let’s raise a glass!

On East 4th Street in Manhattan, as the sun was just starting to slide away, the masses began to gather at the Kraine Theater under the KGB bar.

Greeted by a blond in a fez – who will not return said fez – they gathered tickets, bookmarks, bags, and books on their way into the theater, each of them hungry to cheer on the battle just about to break out onstage.

The lights were lit, the warriors poised over ragged sheets of paper, and the adjudicators squared, with jaws set, ready to stare into the gaping maw of terror that would clang out from this clash of titans.

Another month, and another hotly contested battle in the Prose Bowl. Batman is fighting Superman. Cap is fighting Tony. Hills and Bernie are duking it out on everyone’s Facebook pages. But nothing compares to the war of wits at Pete’s Candy Store.

We cut straight to the action, as Johanna jumped first into the fray, Breaking Bread with the audience with a story detailing your day in church. (Johanna is the one who knocks.) Big Mike followed up with an exceedingly detailed recap of his attendance at a seminar.

As always, Mike needs no mic.

The second half saw the battle turn feverish with Gina lamenting the loss of the world’s greatest couple portmanteau, followed by some general discussion by our panel about the relative pretentiousness of using the term ‘portmanteau.’ Bridget fought back against the tides of cat piss, with a stunning serving of craigslist passive-aggression.

In the wild whirling dusts whipped up in the scrum, our panel labored to work out who should stand tall as our finalists for the. Long standing panelist, Jordan Zolan stared into the recesses of his own nail beds searching for guidance, whilst our artist in residence Christopher Green stroked his beard in lieu of comment. Beside them, our guest judge, Miss Manhattan herself, Elyssa Goodman pondered her notes which had come out all Sanskrit in the fever of the melee.

In the end, Bridget and Gina were chosen as our finalists, to the surprise of no one who looked at the top image on this post. The lightning round echoed with the clash of equally well wielded words, that clanged and locked together. (No really, both their short-short stories were really good, and seemed to interlock.)

The audience was split between them, and after bout after bout they came up evenly matched, and shared the prize for the evening. Bridget took home some oddly marked “baseballs,” and Gina went home with the final piece to her Kylo Ren cosplay.

The battle done, we all took respite in whiskey.

Another great battle in the Prose Bowl guys! Keep in mind, the next show is the SUPER PROSE BOWL. If you haven’t gotten your ticket yet, ask yourself…what am I doing with my life? Also, in a couple weeks you’ll hear the next edition of the ProseCast complete with an interview with last month’s guest judge Holland Cowger.

It’s an exciting time to be in the bowl, ladies and gents. We’ll see you soon!!

This is it, ladies and gents. Our Kickstarter timer switched over from days to hours. We’re in the final stretch.

Thanks to you awesome people out there, we met our initial goal, and we’re going to get to do the Super Prose Bowl, and the ProseCast? will continue to rumble your eardrums on the subway.

We’ve got enough to keep these going, but we really want to do more. Our pilot episode of the ProseCast? was made with tin cans, and recorded on an etch-a-sketch. With your help we can get real sound equipment, and make it sound even better. Plus, we can get the word out, and bring in more guests to make the show even better.

The Super Prose Bowl is going to be awesome, but we have such big plans. And every ticket or tote you pick up means it’s going to be a bigger and more awesome event. We’ve got enough to cover the cost of the theater, but we want to do so much more. Every copy of our anthology means a bigger show. (With enough of them sold, John may even get the lazers he keeps bugging us for.)

So if you haven’t jumped on yet, now is the time. We’ll be offering tickets to the big show after the Kickstarter, but we have to put in the orders for the books, bags, and bookmarks immediately to have them ready for the show, so now’s your chance to snap those up.

If you have become one of our illustrious backers, first, allow me to say, in the most Cumberbatchy manner possible…

You are awesome in every way, and we can’t wait to see you at the show. Thanks for helping us make this show awesome. If you get a chance, tell your friends about the show you’re going to. Some of them might want to get in on this too.

We’ve got a big show coming up this Tuesday. I hope we’ll see you there guys. Until then, put pen to paper, and get those stories ready. Good luck, fellow Bowlers. Grab yourself a drink when you can, because hitting that word count is a pain, and…

Our pilot for the ProseCast? is finally here. There’s a lot packed into this hour of auditory joy. First we have a story from Prose Bowl winner Gina, straight from the show itself. Then we gather another couple winners to discuss what dark tomes they’ve hidden under the bed after one too many edits. Next is our interview with first time novelist, Kaitlyn Greenidge. We discussed her new book We Love You, Charlie Freeman, and all of the challenges that went with it. There’s another couple seconds, but they’re a secret, and secrets are no good if you tell them, so go listen!

You can listen to it here, but even better would be if you subscribed on iTunes, and gave us a good review. It’ll help get this going.

Even better would be if you made a visit to our Kickstarter. We made this podcast with a couple of tin cans and a turntable with a pothole in it. With the funds from our Kickstarter, we can get real equipment, get higher level hosting, bring in more guests, and all in all produce a show that you guys deserve, on a regular basis, rather than one every two or three months. Please consider going by and helping us with this one.

And, yeah, tell us what you think!! We want to know what you want to hear more of, if we get to keep making this show.

(Yeah, by the way, that question mark is there because we’re not sure about the name. We have a few nominees that we’re still contending with, but we couldn’t keep this show under our hat any longer. We’ll be looking to you guys for help there in a little bit.)

March was a big show for the Prose Bowl. It started off with our host railing against St. Patrick’s turning into a green Santa Con, before reciting some slightly twisted Yeats.

Then our storied artist-in-residence, Christopher Green, dropped the big news about the Super Prose Bowl coming up June 19th, and the Podcast going out all over the world, and the big Kickstarter to fund them both! Take a look. There’s awesome stuff in there.

Prose Bowl stalwart, Jordan Zolan, was joined on the panel by Kaitlyn Greenidge who’s new novel, We Love You, Charlie Freeman, came out just last week. It’s really phenomenal, and you all should take a look!!

We kicked off the evening with Heather who read a story aptly named, “Good Reads,” about a woman having an extremely neutral evening. Johanna read “Hide and Seek,” continuing the trend of very accurately named stories, since hers put us back in the mind of a youngling curled into a corner, waiting for their cousins to find them. In the second half Dana read “Untitled,” breaking the naming trend right open. Dana introduced us to Meryl who might need a nurses help with her pants, but still wants her KOOLS. Hundreds, please. Andrew decided to adhere to the earlier meme with “Love Letter From A Catarpillar To His Butterfly” about that exact thing. Extra points for using the term pulchritudinous.

We had one extra reader this time around. Tim Coover read at the first Prose Bowl, and has been a big friend of the show ever since. He’s moving out to Taiwan, but he had one more story for us. Tim read “Date Night,” and sang his way through the end of his story.

Our illustrious panel sweated over their choice but it came down to Heather and Dana in the Lightning Round. These two gave in all in short, sweet, succinct stories, and when the dust had settled Dana took down the prize for the night. A hooded ducky towel. I’m going to say that again. Dana won a hooded ducky towel.

Dana even mentioned that her story came together waiting at the DMV earlier that day. Think about that, ladies and gentlemen. You too might be able to turn wasted hours waiting for updated plates, into a hooded ducky towel of glory!!

We can’t wait to see you guys around next time, Bowlers! Until then, check out the Kickstarter, and keep an eye on our Twitter and Facebook. We’ll have announcements and fun stuff for you guys all month! See ya’ll soon!

Hey Everyone! Last night was an amazing show, and I’ll have the recap up real soon, but we have some big news!

If you were at the show last night, you heard about our big plans for the future. We want to start a Podcast to get the Prose Bowl out into the world, and we want to have a great big show with all our winners from the past; a Super Prose Bowl.

To get those things going, we put together a Kickstarter where you can get tickets to the show, get some awesome stuff like an anthology of Prose Bowl stories, and a Tote bag with our brand new logo! There’s also some awesome opportunities to get story feedback, or have our crew do a dramatic reading. There’s signed books, and meet ups with authors. Heck, if you want dinner with the PB crew, that’s on there.

This show has been amazing so far because you guys have been great. We want to give all of you a bigger platform for your awesome stories, and bring you some awesome content. So grab some tickets, or buy a tote bag to flash your fiction with style!

The Prose Bowl is up and running again, and we’ve got a big one lined up for March! It’s just a couple days before St. Patricks, so you can help prime yourself for the holiday with a whiskey from the bar, while you prime your mind with some stories from Brooklyn’s finest.

Our special guest panelist this time around is Kaitlyn Greenidge, who’s fantastic debut novel just got released. Take a look!

We’re going to have a few announcements for you guys. Seriously, this is going to be a big one! So get those 900 words slapped together and get yourself down to Pete’s Candy Store come Tuesday. Let the Bowl Begin!!!